Gus Kenworthy took to Twitter on Thursday to make a statement he had long known to be true about himself.
The 24-year-old Olympic silver-medal skier surprised the sports world with an ESPN cover and three simple words: "I am gay."
Kenworthy told ESPN he started coming out to hi family and friends about two years ago and he initially promised himself he would come out publicly only after winning the gold in Sochi saying: "I didn't want to come out as the silver medalist from Sochi. I wanted to come out as the best freeskier in the world."
Last year, Kenworthy became one-third of the American trio that swept the men's slopestyle event at the Sochi Olympics.
Though Gus Kenworthy earned a reputation as being the skier who tries out new tricks before anyone else, he explained why he was afraid of revealing his true self.
“I was insecure and ashamed,” Gus said. “Unless you’re gay, ‘being gay’ has never been looked at as being cool. And I wanted to be cool.” Gus felt pressure to “fit in” with the rest of the skiing world.
Gus did his best to hide being gay, reportedly dating ice-skater Gracie Gold and Miley Cyrus. These fake relationships successfully masked his sexuality, but he said that he would “literally…sleep with a girl and then cry about it afterward.”
According to Alyssa Roenigk of ESPN The Magazine, he has known he was gay since he was five years old. He contemplated suicide at times rather than coming out.
But Gus explained that he finally felt ready to share his story with the world.
“Hiding everything away is so painful. I mean, it’s like you’re constantly lying and you’re constantly feeling like you’re being deceitful. I’m just at that point where I’m ready to kind of open up and let everyone see me for me, and I hope everyone accepts it,” he said.
Gus Kenworthy previously garnered worldwide attention not only for medaling at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, but also for adopting four dogs during the games.
